Recognize The Necessity Of Social Media For Your Enterprise
Even if Newsweek didn’t see MySpace ‘coming’ in their 2005 article entitled, “Blogs Will Change Your Business”. By 2008, they were ready to let the entire world know they were wrong. Something had exploded! It was the advent of how social media for business would change everything forever.
One thing is for certain. Socializing on the web isn’t going away anytime soon. It’s here to stay and it isn’t controlled by any one entity. Each platform grows and dissolves through its popularity with its user base. When the members of LINKEDIn get bored they head over to Facebook. When Facebook gets old they migrate to Ecademy. When they tire of Ecademy they move over to one of the other socializing platforms that will fill there need for fresh information, new people and intelligent discourse.
So wake up and start clicking around. When was the last time you did a ’search’ on your name or your business’ name? If you’re a ‘Mom & Pop Op’ you probably haven’t given much though to networking on the web. Sure, you’re busy but who isn’t? Keying into your customers and getting to know why big business uses socialized platforms is your key to the future.
No matter how hard you work at the details, people gravitate toward businesses they can talk about. Today, they’re using popular social networking platforms such as Twitter, LINKEDIn and Facebook. If your stuff is ‘good’ they want to share it. If what you’re doing isn’t so good they’ll want to share it even more. So where is your next online marketing campaign taking you?
Within your employee base is a wealth of socialized info-mania. If you haven’t asked your employees to link in and chat up your business online, then your chances are failure within the next five years are charted. Unless you provide a product or service that is in high demand. Your business will be history if you’re not clicked into the online social sphere.
One problem that many business owners have in using social networking is the time commitment that is required to administer a well optimized social media campaign. Fortunately, there are resources available that allow you to automate many of the most tedious of those chores. A couple of those are Miracle Traffic Bot and GooBert, which we have reviewed elsewhere.
But what’s that you say? Your business is highly localized and can’t possibly be hurt or helped by a global presence such as LINKEDIN or Facebook? Silly you for thinking so small. The world has changed as much as advertising has changed. People located in Bali might well seek your business out the next time they visit San Francisco. That is, if they even know you exist. That local crowd, who visits your shop now and again, they’re LINKEDIN even if you’re not. They’ll think better of you if they know your business is approachable online as well as offline.
Nobody wants to have to work harder to get customers or retain the ones they have. But for you ‘Mom & Pop Ops’ out there who think that you can continue to grow without online intervention. Think again. Then click into the future by using social media for your business. Like most things, you can use it or lose it! But with social media one thing is for certain, if you don’t use it well, it will use you and ultimately that may not be such a ‘good thing’ after all.
